Summers at Castle Auburn

April 2, 2001
The latest enchantment from Crawford Award winner Shinn (The Shape Changer's Wife
and the Samaria trilogy) combines romantic spice, a dash of faerie and a pinch of intrigue to create a hybrid soufflé that is delicious, if not filling. Lowborn Corie, the impressionable young heroine, spends her summers with her highborn sister, Elisandra, at Castle Auburn and the rest of the year in a village apprenticed to a "wise woman" witch/herbalist called Grandmother. Corie accompanies her Uncle Jaxon on a hunt for the Aliora, faerielike creatures who serve as unwilling slaves to the humans inhabiting this quasi-medieval world. Also along for the ride is Elisandra's future husband, Prince Bryan of Auburn, a vain 16-year-old adored by most girls (including Corie) and loathed by most men. As Corie ages, she gets over her crush on the increasingly narcissistic and self-indulgent young prince. The relationship between the sisters deepens along with the plot lines revolving around Jaxon's obsession with the Aliora and their queen, Rowena, whose flickering presence suggests other, darker story lines that Shinn might have investigated to produce a less predictable confection. The love story between the hunter and the hunted is more electrifying than the sisters' romances. What makes Bryan change is never explored fully, just as his constant bad-boy image is never explained. While the story moves quickly in Shinn's seasoned hands, her fans may be left hungry for more substantive fare.

April 15, 2001
As the illegitimate daughter of a royal lord, young Corie has the best of two worlds. She spends idyllic summers at Castle Auburn, home of her father's family, and the rest of the year with her maternal grandmother, learning the healer's craft. At the castle, Corie is groomed by her uncle for an eventual political alliance through marriage, though she is too dazzled by her handsome cousin Bryan, heir to the throne, to notice. As the summers pass, however, Bryan shows his true colors. The brash, arrogant youth matures into a cruel and self-centered man; a man unfit to be king, some say. At the same time, Corie's eyes open to the misery of the magical aliora, whom she loves, but who are hunted for sport and enslaved by the nobility. Thus, at 17, amid a hotbed of family and political unrest, Corie comes of age, risking all that she loves for what she believes in her heart to be right. Her choices, and the woman she becomes, will change Castle Auburn forever.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)